MATTHEW WALSH

​From the Ocean to the Prairies is a Long Way to Go

​200 km north of Edmonton I fell in love with a stationary manwho worked the projector nights at the single-screen Rex Theatre.

His family, a stationary family. The mother, a stationary woman retiredand now paints still life of fruits and her greyhound. His family from Red

Deer, pulp and paper people. They were not sick of it. My first timeIn Drumheller I was like what the hell is this place. I slept well

in a motel built upon old slaughterhouse land. I had fuckedup dreams where I told upset cows I loved cows and had friends

who loved cows. I pulled cherries out of the VLT in BostonPizza. In the bathroom a hand scrawled how do you tell up from down?

In Reptile World I saw a green lizard in the gift shop where couplesfrom Nevada used all their international data on him. I believe

it was worth it. I got cold sleeping in a car dealership outsideWinnipeg under the comforter of a 2002 Sedan Ultima.

In Brandon I took a picture of Brandon University for my friend,Brandon, and I got my palm read by a stranger named Sharon

who read sun lines through Thunder Bay and the surrounding areas.There were so many trees, a classifier of trees could talk the entire

highway. The highway deer at night, like paper cut-outson hill-sides before the houses and urban sprawl, so many and identical.

Dear Ottawa Ex-Boyfriend, I heard you were dating a younger man,and you steal everything from him and buy him bacon to make up for it.

I fell asleep near Gaspé, and woke up in Cap de la Madeline, LaBonhomme dancing ludacris at the entrance of his ice palace, maple syrup

strips on snow. I heard fiddle, so many fiddles. A man from the busfollowed me, and I said yes, Banff is a catalogue city, of course

I was tired of the air conditioning breathing on me like a drunk guyin a bar. I missed the cadence of my own legs, all my landmarks sore.

I wasn’t thirty thousand feet in the airand I didn’t need to look and see if I could fly.

Eye Poem

​I had a friend who tried to write a poem with two roomsin it. The rooms were supposed to be his boyfriend’s eyes.

He looked up all parts of the eye for terminology, as an anchorpoint. I said whatever you do don’t call the poem Two Rooms

and that really cleared the room. I thought he was going to jumpfrom the fire escape and Patty went to go meet Patty

at seven-thirty. My mother once tried to write a love storyon the computer and I laughed at her.

I said what are you doing? which hurt her feelings and I hurther feelings twice in my life. My grandmother died

and I contracted a virus which went into my everything, includingeyes. My mother’s friend at the gas station asked did I have something

in my eyes. I said, no they’re infected, so a lot of things can happento your eyes. I think about light travelling to the forest floor

or my friend coming back looking for his debit card, lifting upall the house plants looking for it. My friend doesn’t want his voice

too Victorian. I tell him don’t do that Byron thing. I would reflecton the tired land of my lover’s body, but I do not love

the word lover if there is no cat in front of it. My friend Patty’s eyesgo grey to purple to grey. She says her ganglions are weather-controlled.

Ganglion is a cool word, gang lion. There is always something you can tryand do for a boyfriend. Nostalgia is good in poems. I had a boring childhood

and loved a lot my Viewmaster. I had slides of He-Man I could slip insideto check out his butt all day. I had an eye for his green tiger, who taught me

you could not count on someone else’s mood. I tell my friend risk it,make a sexual innuendo, just make the poem pay. I once worked on a poem

for a kill-fee. My end lines were how I walked down my boyfriend’s elbowto all other streets and avenues of his body.

MATTHEW WALSH is a queer poet from the eastern shore of Canada, who had taken the bus twice across Canada. His poems can be found in The Malahat Review, Arc, Existere, Matrix, Carousel, and Geist online. He can be found on Twitter as @croonjuice

The Publisher of The Rusty Toque is offering a six-week online short fiction workshop starting in January 2019.

DESCRIPTIONIn this six-week online course, award-winning writer, editor, publisher, and creative writing instructor Kathryn Mockler will lead you through the process of idea generation, drafting, and revising a short story. Each week you will receive writing prompts and readings, and you will participate in the fiction workshop.

Format: This course is live and will take place online through video conferencing. This is a workshop-based course where you will share your short story with the class and receive constructive feedback on it from the instructor and the workshop participants.

The Rusty Toque would like to acknowledge the sacred land on which we operate. It has been a site of human activity for 15,000 years. This land is the territory of the Huron-Wendat and Petun First Nations, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit River. The territory was the subject of the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement between the Iroquois Confederacy and Confederacy of the Ojibwe and allied nations to peaceably share and care for the resources around the Great Lakes. Today, the meeting place of Toronto is still the home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island, and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work in the community, on this territory.